The effect of amounts of light in your bedroom.
I noticed that I had some nice allmost lucid dreams 2 times after I came home drunk. However, I didn't really believe it was just the alcohol.
So this night I left my curtains a bit open . Normally I sleep in an allmost completely dark room. Becouse the 2 times I was drunk I didn't close any curtains, and woke up with the sun in my face so to say.
And It worked. It might have been a placebo effect, but I had my first Real LD this night =D The LD happend around 8am, so indeed there was some light my my room allready.
I do actually think that light somehow wakes your concious a bit when sleeping. Afterall you can see light though your eyelids, and it makes sense. People are ment to wake up when the sun is shining ^___^
What are your experiences? I for sure will sleep with the curtains a bit open from now on. =)
in a place we call the twilight zone
There are a few cool things that come to mind with this topic (i'm a science major, and kinda a sci fi geek, so please bear with me while i geek out on you for just a sec...):
*H.G. Wells short story - "The Platner Story"
*Brion Gysin - the inventor of the first Dream Machine. Very interesting.
*the popular series, personal favorite of mine, The Twilight Zone
*Don Juan Matus' teachings about "seeing", and the minds eye, and your real eyes, and how dusk and dawn are particularly helpful in allowling your minds eye perception to explore.
The perception of our world mainly revolves around the things recieved by our eyes. our eyes receive light. that's all they receive. right right. So, twilight, or rather, the diffusion of light does in fact play a trick on the eyes, even when they're closed, and thus a trick on the mind.
*note* In complete darkness you're essentially deprived of your visual sense, and when your mind is deprived of sensory input it essentiall goes into it's own little corner and mentually masterbates. It has to generate it's own perceptions to interpret, thus its own stimulus, and really that's the difference between complete virtual reality, and partial virtual reality which is a sweet mixture of both self generated images and ideas, PLUS the addition of outside stimulus. I think this particular mixing perceptions is fantastic because during the rest of our waking/sleeping life we typically get to use only one or the other, and the dominance of one sense over the other almost completely masks out the presence of the other. You know, filtering, it's what our brains do to make sure we get the goods when we're processing information. But twilight...is unique. to say the least. :)
Some light falling on your eyelids allows the reception of at least a few visual elements - motion mostly, differences between ligtness and darkness, and of course you can see your eyelids! (check out the Brion Gysin's Dream Machine, it's awsome, and it illustrates the principle.)
Personally I think it might also be related to he fact that there are two periods of this kind of ambient lighting everyday, early morning, and early night. These periods don't last long, less than an hour together, but they come with regularity and subtle shift daily. As the days change and seasons change etc. our twilights change.
Cool, yeah?